Share this Page

Meraki WiFi APs Boost Performance, Drop Price

By Dian Schaffhauser

11/16/10

Meraki has released a couple of new access points (APs) in its 802.11n family, boosting performance and lowering cost. The new Meraki MR16 is a dual-concurrent 802.11n access point, designed for enterprise and campus deployments and priced at $649. The Meraki MR12 is a single-radio 802.11n access point, best suited for small branches, teleworkers, and home office deployments, priced at $399. Both support about 100 users and are about an inch thick in size.

"There are many things to love about Meraki's wireless products," said beta tester Bobby Clark, IT project manager at Remington College, a career college with multiple locations. "The styling of the MR16 is great; it installs very easily, and then blends into your environment. We've been extremely happy with the performance, and the cost savings were a huge plus." Each box contains an accessory kit with components for wall, drop ceiling, and desktop mounting.

"We are amazed at how many clients one AP can handle and the area of coverage it provides," he added. "This allowed us to replace our previous vendor's APs with fewer Meraki APs and at the same time provide better performance."

Features introduced by the company in September 2010 are included in the new APs. Those include spectrum analysis for uncovering and mitigating non-WiFi interference and application-aware traffic shaping that lets the network administrator set up traffic policies. The devices also integrate a policy firewall for guest, user, and group-based access control.

Meraki's controller infrastructure is cloud-based, which means management of the WiFi network is done through a browser-based dashboard and updates to the firmware take place in the background during normal AP operations.